The Department of Defense (DOD) announced Tuesday the Overall Award winner and the People’s Choice Award winner for the DOD Maintenance Innovation Challenge (MIC) during its annual DOD Maintenance Symposium in Salt Lake City, UT. The five finalists for the MIC presented their solutions to a packed audience on December 10.
The Overall Award winner is Enhancing Field Repair Capabilities through Mixed Reality, presented by Col. Kirk Spangenberg, Marine Depot Maintenance Command. The “People’s Choice” Award winner is: On-Aircraft Cold Spray to Optimize Maintenance & Reduce Logistics, presented by Matthew Chu, Fleet Readiness Center – Southwest.
The DOD Joint Technology Exchange Group (JTEG) principals served as judges, selecting the overall winner from a total of 100 outstanding entries. Audience members at the MIC session selected the People’s Choice winner from the five finalists, based on their presentations. NCMS presented both groups of winners with a check for $50,000, which can be applied to in-kind support to enable the winners to conduct further demonstrations for DOD representatives.
The Overall Award winner, Enhancing Field Repair Capabilities through Mixed Reality, provides a mixed reality headset tele-maintenance system (TMS) with digital work instructions to deliver expert coaching on equipment and tasks to technicians on the job. It reduces travel costs and downtime by eliminating the need for depot Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) on-site. This system enables quick access to depot and industry experts for faster fault diagnosis and repairs, enhancing equipment readiness and unit combat effectiveness. It will be deployed globally across USMC depots and maintenance units.
The People’s Choice Award winner, On-Aircraft Cold Spray to Optimize Maintenance & Reduce Logistics, highlights the benefits of using cold spray repair for on-aircraft maintenance in contested logistics scenarios with the benefits of reduced downtime, increased aircraft availability, improved safety, and significant cost savings. The system utilizes portable spray booths to enable the use of cold spray repair, a solid-state coating deposition method in which powdered metals are accelerated through a nozzle to velocities sufficient to bond layers of new metal to worn surfaces.
The MIC competition is open to new innovations that include novel technologies, unique collaborative business relationships, resourcing strategies, business processes, production processes, and any other transformative capability that has the potential to make maintenance and sustainment more agile, effective, efficient, and affordable.
For more information on the Maintenance Innovation Challenge, visit: https://ncms.org/maintenance-innovation-challenge/. To view information on all the 2024 MIC entries, see the MIC entries book here: https://online.flippingbook.com/view/590872216/.
